The Many Sides of Design

When you say the word “design” to 100 people, they’ll likely picture 100 different things. Design is deeply subjective and personal. Still, we can get a sense of what design looks like by asking the people who live it every day. For our most recent episode, we sat down with 13 BWBR team members to ask them: How did you know you wanted to be in the design field?

Hosted by: 
Matthew Gerstner - BWBR Lead AV Producer

Guests:
Chan Scholz - Project Manager
Whitney Martin - Senior Project Architect
Bryan Desma - Construction Administrator
Abbie Zeien - Senior Project Manager
Andrew North, Jr. - Architectural Intern
Amanda Aspenson - Senior Project Manager
Doug Wild - Principal
Sam Griesgraber - Interior Designer II
Tre'mon Collins - Architectural Intern
Miranda McNamar - Interior Designer II
Ross Baker - Job Captain
Rachel Slette - Senior Graphic Designer
Richard Stuerman - Senior Project Manage

Music provided by Artlist.io
Siberian Summer by Sunny Fruit
DuDa by Ian Post
The Dawn of a New Era by Brander

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Transcript

Matthew Gerstner  00:10

This is Side of Design from BWBR, a podcast discussing all aspects of design with knowledge leaders from every part of the industry. 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for another episode of Side of Design. I'm Matthew Gerstner. In this episode, I had the opportunity to talk with 13 of my co-workers on another design related topic. Each of these co-workers has a different role within our office. And because we all have diverse backgrounds that lead us to where we are, I was wondering, when did they know they wanted to do what they do? When did they know they wanted to be in the design field? How we define and think about design has many variations, depending on what our roles are, and what our personal history is. So keep listening and get to know my co-workers a little better, and what inspired each of them to enter their profession.

Chan Scholz  01:02

I'm Chan Scholz, I'm a project manager and architect with BWBR, and I've been working here for eight years now. I came to it kind of later life, I worked in many different fields. I was a cook for many years, in restaurants and worked in all kinds of different restaurants. I was a armored car driver and guard for a while. I went to school for many different things before trying to figure out what I was looking for, my path like everybody else. And my wife's family, well, she was born in Chicago. So we were down in Chicago visiting family extended family, and many of them live in Oak Park, Illinois. So that as you probably know, that's the home of Frank Lloyd Wright. So that's where he started. So we went on a tour. But you know, I saw a lot of the properties that either the buildings that he built in Oak Park and around the area, and we took a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio, and it blew my mind. I mean, it's just all the detail everywhere. I mean, everywhere you look was thought out and well crafted. And just the deep attention to detail in everything really made me think wow, every every little thing in this house is thought out. And it got me interested in design. Frank Lloyd Wright was my first love and I liked the history of it, that was really the path I was going to take was architectural history, and academia. But graduating, finishing school and taking all the classes, I loved all the history classes. I just started working in a firm and just kind of kept working in a firm and didn't pursue academia after that. Now I'm ingrained in project work now, but I still have an appreciation for the history of grandpa Frank.

Whitney Martin  02:55

Hello, my name is Whitney Martin, and I am a senior project architect at BWBR. I guess I did have the whole Lego scene when I was younger. My parents also had a friend that was an architect and I was a real vocational kid in high school. I took welding and building trades and CAD and then my junior year of high school, I told my parents I wanted to do an interior design workshop out in Denver. So they sent me out to do this this design workshop for interior design, and I got to participate in a couple of different Charettes. One being industrial design, interior design, and I forget the other one, but the industrial design instructor said you know have you ever considered architecture outside of interior design and after I had taken that that workshop I realized interior design while it's needed it wasn't for me and so I took this instructors advice and went home and chatted with mom and dad and said this instructor recommended I consider looking into architecture and I did and here I am.

Bryan Desma  04:19

My name is Brian Desma and my role at the firm is a construction administrator. As far as design goes  and why the quotations 'Why did I want to become an architect?' I guess it stemmed from an early age from my parents, I guess for starters. My mom had an artist background. So we always had a lot of fine art in our house. She's a fine artist, and so the the discussion of artwork and design from that standpoint was always around me. You know, it was a big part of our life. And my father was a mechanical engineer. He actually worked and Ellerbe Beckett back in the day. So having him have that engineering background, I guess melded with the artwork from my mom kind of came together as architecture. One of the I think the first buildings that I looked at that was really inspiring was the cathedral in St. Paul, as for a lot of people, it's a very inspiring building. And I just, I just fell in love with it, and the detail of it. And, you know, I wanted to go into architecture. I just thought it was the coolest thing. And I still do I love it. You know, even though I'm not designing, I'm around design all the time. And, you know, being part of the construction process, I think is, there's still design every day, a part of my job. So it's still it hasn't ended. I mean, it's not just in the pretty picture and the big picture. It's in the details, it's everywhere. So I carry that with me through every part of my job. That's a big part of it. But, you know, it really comes from that early developmental years with my parents, and just being around that.

Abbie Zeien  06:05

I'm Abbie Zeien, with BWBR, I'm an architect. So my dad is a contractor, and so I think always going through life as a kid, sort of being in the industry you know, tangentially, you know, hearing about it from the construction side made me realize, I really didn't want to be a contractor. To that side of it. But, you know, being able to see the construction and building things, and being able to create space was kind of always in the back of my mind. And then, you know, later on that I always liked art. I liked being creative, and really liked kind of the spatial aspect of things, you know, of how do you move through space? How do you create space? How do you make better space is, I think really what kind of led me into architecture. As you get more into architecture, it's always easy to lose sight of, okay, why did I go into this at the beginning? And I think in the last couple of years, certainly my path has maybe veered off from like, some of those original reasons. And so you know, it's always kind of like, okay, let's let me think back, what do I really want to do? What made me want to go into architecture and try to like your back into some of that.

Andrew North, Jr.  07:30

Hello, I'm Andrew North, Jr. I'm a architectural intern. I think I've been working at BWBR for nine months now. So happy to be here. My answer has changed and morphed, and I think, become less selfish in a way. So I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was growing up, a lot. And even when I was young, I came to the realization that my eyes are really, really bad. So you know, you, you learn, I learned back then that you need good eyes to be a fighter pilot. And this was before I knew Lasik existed. Nowadays I could've done it. But so then I, you know, learned my grandpa had built a Sears house. Like picked out his house and designed it, and built it. And while he wasn't an architect, the idea of building a space for my family to live in, in the future just like stuck with me. So ever since I was like, 10, I was like, I want to be an architect. And so then I was blessed enough to have the opportunity to kind of sit in as a high school intern at a small firm in Golden Valley. And they kind of mirror BWBR but on a smaller scale. They they do more lower education buildings and build out smaller projects. I noticed I really liked the education world of it. So I started to realize like, maybe the single family homes and this designer home thing isn't what's appealing to me. So then I get to university, and I just that idea just gets further ingrained in me, like I have, I met a lot of professors and all they did was single family homes. And I came to this realization that the type of architecture you do, it really determines the strength of the relationship of your work with people and the number of people your work touches. So a single family home might have an immense deep impact on a single family, right, like eight individuals roughly. And it's gonna have the deepest impact that can have. Or you could do something like, I don't know, work and design targets or something right? And then you're impacting a ton of people, but maybe to a lesser extent. And so, being surrounded in University made me realize I just really love universities and schools. And thinking about it a little more, I was like, Okay, well, then the university and healthcare buildings, those are like this insane middle ground where you're impacting on higher amount of people on a super high level. And so it kind of became, you know, I want to be an architect because I want to, you know, be the next Mies, or something, or I want to design that the next Barcelona Pavilion or something to like, I want to design a space, that means a lot to a lot of people. And it's funny, because if you told my younger self dude, you're gonna love designing schools, get me away from school. But it's, that's how I know I really liked it, because I don't feel that way at all about it anymore. And I love interacting with the different universities. That's another big thing I do. And it's taught me a lot about how they see students and their infrastructure and, and how that plays into effect. So I think it was a really positive mindset change.

Amanda Aspenson  11:09

My name is Amanda Aspenson, and I am a Senior Project Manager at BWBR. The first memory I have of someone mentioning, architect, or the word architecture was in seventh grade, my middle school geometry teacher said to me one day after class, she said, you know, Amanda, there's something about your spatial ability, and you seem to really like geometry. Have you ever thought of architecture? I said No, yeah, I came from, my mom was in academia, my dad was in IT, I had no idea what an architect was. And so she said, You know, there's, I think there's a program that you can join, it's called the Architectural Youth Program in Minneapolis Public Schools. You know, later on, why don't you look into that in high school or whatever. So then it ends up that I signed up for the architectural youth program through Minneapolis Public Schools, and just loved it. I, with Mohamed Laval and Jennifer Tuttle, and we would go and look at job sites and learn all about architecture. And it was after school with a couple of my friends, downtown Minneapolis, you know, it was an adventure. And so I really found out about the profession in that way. And I never quite knew how I would fit within the profession. I got to school and I'm like, well, I love design, but I don't know what my niche will be. And so I ended up I went to undergrad for architecture, got my BS in architecture, and a minor in geography. I don't know why. And then met my husband as a sophomore in undergrad. Long story short, we're now 20 years later, we're both architects. We both work in firms but I had a I had a very winding path, though to to BWBR because I wasn't quite sure what area of architecture I was really interested in. So I worked on the private sector side. And then I went to the public sector side as an owner's rep. And then now back on the private sector side and I finally discovered that I love project management people and teams. So it took a little bit of a winding path, but always in architecture

Doug Wild  14:33

My name is Doug Wild and I am a principal at BWBR and the market I work in is science and technology buildings. My story might be Let me see 1,2,3 things. The architectural stool that I sit on, why I'm sitting on it has three legs. The first leg is I used to love to build snow forts and tree forts as a young kid. Yeah. And then as soon as they were done, I was absolutely bored with them. And I never played in them, I might go build another one. So for snow forts that worked out pretty well for tree forts, right, there's only so many trees that we had in our yard. So that struck me as I like to I mean, that was where my interest was. And I didn't recognize that till years after the fact. The other aspect was, I worked a lot in construction growing up. And so I felt that I had a knowledge that might provide a foundation for something, right, but I know I didn't want to just be a laborer for the rest of my life, that didn't seem to be a good path. And then finally, I don't know if you know this, but I have two brothers who are architects, one is older, and one is younger. And after high school, I went into the service. And as I got out, I went into architecture, because that's what my older brother did. And it wasn't any particular love or passion, just an interest. And as I got into it, I was lucky enough to be recognized for what I was able to do. So I had some success in school. And that underscored for me along with those other two things, that underscored for me that, hey, I kind of like this, I like to work hard at it. And this might be, this might be a good path. I think, if I was to add a fourth leg, the oil embargo of 1973, I was 10 years old, it scared the bejesus out of me. And that got me going on a sustainability bent. And as I look back in my career, some of my favorite moments are, where we've been able, or my favorite projects, are where we've been able to really focus on the sustainability aspect of the project. Because that is especially important wherever we can conquer it.

Sam Griesgraber  17:14

I'm Sam Griesgreber. I'm an interior designer at BWBR I've been here about five and a half, almost six years now. So if I had to pinpoint a moment, where it kind of set me on this path was when I was probably 11 years old, maybe 10-11 years old. I was living in South Carolina at the time. And my grandparents lived in Georgia, we visited with them a lot. And one of the times, my grandma took me with a group of her friends through a neighborhood a new development of model homes. And so I was  10 years old at the time, and I was just infatuated with all these nice new houses and different floor plans. And it was Georgia, so they had a lot of cool outdoor spaces. And one in particular, I remember had like this cool tree house attached to it. It was like a nice, Okay, I was 10 years old. So I don't know how it actually is to this day, but it was like a luxury treehouse, and I just, that stuck with me for the rest of my life. And so I think that sort of set me on this path of just loving how houses were laid out floor plans. And so if you remember those magazines, you could buy like grocery stores or pharmacies that were filled with floor plans. So I would always pick those up. And I feel like I'd spend hours just flipping through and, you know, drawing over that and starting to draw my own floor plans and even started do like elevations of house exteriors. It was just, I don't know, I was little I could die, but I feel like that really set me on the design path. And so I thought, Oh, I'm gonna build houses when I'm older. I'm going to sell houses thinking like real estate. Obviously, that was, I'm not a salesperson, and so that didn't pan out. But as I got later in life and figured out what was out there, you know, architecture, interior design, houses, commercial, that sort of thing. Once I got really to college, I think that's when it became clear that it wasn't really houses, my interest changed and it wasn't designing houses anymore. It was really about I guess the psychology of spaces and I feel like when I took a few college courses my first year to kind of just get a feel for what which direction I wanted to go that really helped me decide it was interior design.

Tre'mon Collins  19:37

My name is Tre'mon Collins I just graduated from FAMU and my role at the firm here is full time intern kind of just taking in as much information as possible hoping out where I can. I think my story might be the weirdest of all the people in the office. And mine was you know, watching action movies growing up. We were big on movies in my house like movie nights. So just watching movies and like you know, even if it was like a horror movie, like in the beginning credits or like the ending credits, they will always pan the camera over like city skylines. And I will always, just that was my favorite part of the movie, just seeing that and then pointing out like notable buildings in each skyline. I don't know, that just made me kind of like want to look deeper into that. So about the time got into like the fifth grade, or maybe sixth grade, my mom worked for this company for the state back in Florida. Hewlett Packard ended up buying the company out. And I don't know if they ended up all getting like laptops, or if she just, you know, got some kind of pride from HP and bought a laptop, and she brought it home. And I would hijack the laptop and I will like just, wikipedia was my best friend, so I would just look up like cities and Skylines. And then I would like kind of recreate them in paint like just like different, you know, like buildings that I've seen. And I would just like kind of like make my own elevations in paint. I thought it was so weird. So I will like hide the paint files in like folders on my desktop. And I didn't know until now that those are like, kind of like Transics I was making like fifth and sixth grade. And by the time I got to like the fifth or the sixth graders, so I kind of looked on Google for like different jobs that people were successful in, and architecture came look at about like the fith search. And I was like that's what I want to do. And so I wanted to do whatever since like the fifth or sixth grade. Like it was a big thing for me. That was my theme.

Miranda McNamara  21:14

My name is Miranda McNamara. I am an interior designer two. And I work a lot on healthcare and higher education and corporate work. I actually love this question because I feel like, there's a balance. I feel like some people have a similar story and others are like, Oh, that is not how I came about it at all. So I have known for a very long time, since a very young age that I wanted to be an interior designer. I wanted to be like an architect, interior designer only because my dad's a contractor. And he had all the floor plans, all of you know all the rules of drafting things, he had all the things. So I would hope and pray that he'd bring home a set of sheets for me to look at. And like take a little trace paper, literally I did this as like, I think I was like eight. I had like writing over all the floor plans and my dad would walk me through all of the different floor plans. And I absolutely loved it, I was obsessed with drawing my own floor plans. So then I also had, with those sheets that he let me keep, because he'd print them and I would just hoard them in my bedroom, I had a binder. And I think I still have it to be honest, I had a binder that was labeled Miranda's Architectural Drawings. Then inside I had like little facts that my dad told me like always stack the restrooms for, you know, saving on plumbing, like most random facts, you know, like square footage calcs, like crazy things. And then I would do and draw my own floor plans in like the little like grided paper. And I would have like schools, I'd have just like the most crazy, I loved doing house stuff. Like I love building my own house. And I knew from such a young age that this is what I wanted to do. And whether it be architecture or interiors, at that point, I didn't really digest what the difference was. But then I also just as side passion, I just was passionate about design and you know, interiors in general. And of course, residential is where I had started. And then ultimately, it was like, this is not where I wanted to go. I had an internship in college for residential company. And then of course, with BWBR, I was like, this is where I want to be, you know, kind of having those larger projects. The residential market is a lot different than what I assumed it would be. I can't get my own personal taste involved in the residential markets. That's what I didn't like. But yeah, so yeah, started from a really young age, and then ended up commercial but was residential. I think I did do some school drawings in my architectural notebook. But yeah, it was mostly my dad, it was my dad's influence, because he was always bringing home floor plans and marking things up. And I saw that and I was like, I want to do that. It seems like you have a cool job. So I took that and like ran with it, put my own little spin on it. And then interior design was kind of what I ended up with. It's crazy. I like think back to it now and it's like to be where I actually ended up like, it's not something that was like a dream and when I would tell people it's like, oh, you actually did it, which is kind of a cool thing to think about.

Ross Baker  24:04

Ross Baker, currently a Job Captain, working on mostly science and tech projects. What inspired me to get into architecture, my undergrad had actually been environmental chemistry. I thought forestry was going to be the route that I was going to go down. And the day after I graduated college, my whole family jumped in our minivan and drove to Montana. And so the four of us then proceeded to build a house out there with help from one of my dad's friends who's a Residential Contractor, so we had his support and help and oversight, but it was really that tactile experience of framing walls and you know, mocking up cardboard a fireplace to decide where to go. And that that whole experience, and then at the end of the day, months later, to actually sit down on the couch with a snack or grab a blanket, lay down, and actually use that space that, you know, my brother and I, dad and mom built, you know, with the help of other people was just so rewarding. And to then be able to use that space that I helped create was sort of that aha moment. And then while I was doing, you know, working construction, started studying for the GRE and making steps towards applying to grad school and getting myself on the path towards architecture. So that was, that was sort of that switch where I thought, this is pretty cool. And for me, to be able to use that space, and now be able to work on projects that create that tangible experience for other people. You know, they may not be sitting on the couch, they might be working there, but to actually create it. It's in the ground. Folks are using it. That's what inspired me to get into architecture and continues to excite me about each new project that I work on.

Rachel Slette  25:21

Rachel Slette have been with BWBR for just under 15 years and Senior Graphic Designer, managing the graphics department with BWBR. I always had a sketchbook that I would carry around and I would just doodle in it all the time. And I don't even know I was probably 9 or 10. And I remember I would look at coloring books and color the Disney characters or draw the Disney characters in my own sketchbook. So eventually I filled up a couple of sketchbooks, and my parents were like, let's get like a bigger one for you. And I remember carrying it around all the time to just show people and just to doodle. And I remember one specific drawing, I think it was a Timon, remember Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King. I think I still have that I have the whole sketchbook. But drawing, I mean, I just brought my sketchbook all around. And then once I got into high school when we could take art classes, I think I had art class for probably three hours out of the day, freshman through my senior year, like I just stacked my high school courses around art classes. And then I was part of the yearbook committee and became an editor of the yearbook one year. And our art teacher was also the instructor that oversaw the entire yearbook. So I just grew to love all types of art. And then deciding where I wanted to go, my junior year, I started looking at different programs. And we went and toured a bunch of different ones. And I really liked Stout's program, and the fact that you had to like get in early, they only took a few students every year, I think there was like 26 students that they took when I had submitted my application and everything. So you had to submit it before November of your senior year. So you had to have a pretty good idea of where you wanted to go what you wanted to do, especially if you wanted to get into any of their art programs. And from there, I was like yep, I think graphic design is gonna give me the variety that I want, that I need. That way I can see if I want to go into any other direction within art, but graphic design gave me that variety. So here I am today I got my job through Tina, my college roommate, that's my story.

Richard Stuerman  29:10

My name is Richard Stuerman, and I'm a Senior Project Manager and I've been with BWBR since February of 1996. I grew up in Santa Barbara, California and my father lived in this house and next door was this very modern house. Kind of a cool modern house. And one day we had some friends over and one of them was saying something about, I can't remember if he was growing up in the neighborhood or whatever, but he made a reference to the house next door. About like oh yeah, I used  to always love coming up here and going to the Frank Lloyd Wright house next door. And I was in high school. And I was like, Frank Lloyd Wright, what? What is that? You know? And, and so then right about that time, in high school, I had to do a report on a great American. And I get the list, and on the list, there is this Frank Lloyd Wright person. And I was like, well, that's kind of cool. I live right next door to one of his houses. And so I chose him and started to do my research, and pulled out the books. And then as I'm flipping through and looking at stuff, a lot of it was, you know, it's kind of interesting, whatever, here and there. It's kind of funny, because the first thing I thought of is like, none of this looks like the house next door. All of a sudden, I turn the page, and I see falling water. I mean just absolutely every thing about that piece of architecture, just jumped out of the page. And I was like, Okay, if that's what architects do, that's what I want to do. And so then it was just set right there. And that was my path moving forward. Then as the story goes, I get through, and I think it was literally in my fourth year, I was in a four year program and then right at the very tail end, and I had a project where I think at the very beginning of it, we were supposed to pick amongst other architects and kind of do a little study and then you'd kind of try to do a relationship thing, whatever. So now, I ended up with Schindler. And I'm flipping through his books, and all of a sudden, there it is!. That's the house next door! It was never a Frank Lloyd Wright house. And so it was great to actually get full circle and kind of come around because the whole time, the more I was studying, the more I was like, I don't know ... I know Frank Lloyd Wright had different phases, but none of the phases really like align with this thing that's next door. And so then when I did find it that was kind of cool. Great closure on the story.

Matthew Gerstner  32:23

I hope you enjoyed each of their stories as much as I did. I know I found a little inspiration in each of them as they reminisced about their 'why' for what they do. Thank you for tuning in, and until next time.  

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